


oh, my love, don't forsake me (take what the water gave me)

by crossingwinter



Series: Star Wars Drabbles & Ficlets [17]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, F/M, Oh No Our Clothes Are Wet Whatever Will We Do, Wishful Thinking, or - Freeform, tros trailer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 06:47:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21295262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: Their sabers clashed, humming in the spray, and Rey's heart was in her throat the entire time.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey
Series: Star Wars Drabbles & Ficlets [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/926970
Comments: 46
Kudos: 445
Collections: Skywalker_Will_Rise





	oh, my love, don't forsake me (take what the water gave me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dalzo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dalzo/gifts), [LoveofEscapism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoveofEscapism/gifts).

> for ruby & rebecca, enablers who caught me in a moment of weakness at 5am on this, the day that ben franklin's ghost haunts me. (though i gotta say, i think ben franklin would be proud of the porn.)
> 
> forgive this unbeta'd mess all mistakes are my own.

For a moment, she worried she had killed him—one well placed kick to the chest, just the way she'd knocked him down on Starkiller. 

But on Starkiller, there'd been ground and swirling snow. On Mon Calamari, there was only the surface of the junk heaps they danced on and then nothing but sea—and she had knocked him right off the surface into the sea.

She had almost died on Ahch-To, when she had dropped down into the water below the cave. She remembered the weight of the water, pulling at her clothes, dragging her down, how she'd flailed against the current, so afraid of choking down water and dying alone, her body never to be found. She knew people could drown in the sinking sands on Jakku, had heard that the worst thing to do was to try to breathe for the sand would fill your lungs, so she'd held her breath against the water. She had survived. 

But surely Kylo knew how to swim. Surely he had been trained in that at some point. And why was she worried about him? He was—he had—

But no—no, she wasn't going down that road, not again. How many times had she curled up in her bunk, trying so very hard not to wonder what would happen if he appeared there behind her, if he pulled her into his arms, his breath hot against her cheek, his heartbeat thrumming loudly in that extremely well-sculpted chest of his? _If I killed him..._

If she killed him, it would be a good thing, a victory for the Resistance, for her friends, for herself. Right?

The waves crashed over the ship and Rey's heart was thudding in her chest, in her throat. Had he drowned? 

She hid her relief behind a snarl as he stalked towards her out of the wave, looking like a drowned womprat, his saber sizzling whenever the seaspray got too close.

He didn't hesitate. He flourished his saber once, twice, before ending it in an overhead strike that Rey lifted her own to meet and a moment later, he was bearing all his weight down on her, trying to break the strength of her legs with the force of his strike. He had done this on Starkiller but it was different now. On Starkiller, he had underestimated her. Not so now. Her muscles screamed, burned, shook, but they did not break.

And then, she got an idea.

She shifted her weight and with a smile, threw him right over her side as he let out a grunt of frustration because the surface of the ship was too wet for him to get proper footing. She watched as he slid, and stumbled and a moment later was clearly about to end up in the water again. But before Rey could even smirk triumphantly at him, his hand shot out and grabbed hold of her ankle and—far from keeping him from sliding in, she lost _her _balance and fell hard on her rear and no—no—she couldn't swim.

The current on Mon Calamari was more vicious than on Ahch-To. Rey flailed, trying hard not to breathe, trying not to let the water weigh her down. Ben had let go of her ankle—was the water crushing him too, pressing against his face against his determination? Or was he a strong swimmer, had he already extracted himself. Was he wondering where she was as he pulled himself back onto the wreckage? Did he worry that she was drowning too?

The next thing she was aware of was Ben crouched over her, his hair dripping with seaspray, his face pale and so very relieved. But before she could process that, she was twisting and retching up sea water and bile, her throat stinging, her lungs laboring. It had gotten into her lungs. She had drowned. 

Ben's hand was rubbing her back, and he was murmuring, "Easy there. Easy. It's all right," so low that she wondered if she was imagining it. The waves were still crashing around her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her lightsaber on the surface a few feet away from her. 

"Did I die?" she asked him when the water was gone from her lungs. He didn't respond right away.

"I think technically yes. For a moment there, your heart stopped." _So did mine_.

She looked at him sharply. She had to have been imagining _those_ words floating across her mind like that, sad and frightened and lonely. 

"Why did you pull me out?" she asked. "It would be easier for your _emperor_ if I died, wouldn't it? Or does he want me alive."

_I want you alive, _she heard him again. Why wasn't he saying the words out loud? She had to be imagining them.

"Your friends have departed," he said. Where was his haughty arrogance? Where was his bitterness, his frustration that she had refused his hand, his vision? Why was he sitting there looking more lost than ever? "It's just us now."

__"Is it ever just us?" she demanded. "With _him_ following our every movement? It can never _be_ just us, Ben. You saved my life—why didn't you let me die?"

_I told you._

"Say it," she growled at him, parroting the words he had said in flames back to him in water. "Go on, say it." She didn't know how to send her thoughts across his mind the way he had sent his across hers. But she tried all the same. _Say it if you mean it._

His lips trembled. His eyes betrayed a riot of emotions, confusion, pain, hope, fear—and something else. Something that made her mouth go dry.

"No more fighting today," he said quietly. "Let's—let's get somewhere dry."

-

Somewhere dry turned out to be his TIE Whisper, and it was only barely dryer because they'd had to open the hatch in order to get inside, and in opening the hatch, a ton of rainwater and seaspray and mist had gotten in with them. The thing was roomier than it looked from the outside, but not roomy enough for two people and Rey was suddenly extremely aware of the way that her clothes were clinging to her body. 

"Can we turn on the heat?" she asked him, shivering, crossing her arms over her chest to try and keep some heat in her. She knew what cold desert nights on Jakku were like. She knew how quickly cold could set in and she was already shivering.

He frowned. "Your lips are turning blue."

"They're not," she replied. Lips didn't do that.

But when she turned her head away from him, she could see her reflection in the misting duraglass of his ship and they definitely weren't...their normal color.

He made a jerking motion out of the corner of her eye and when she turned back to him, he was taking off his gloves—a little more forcefully than he had in their moment on Ahch-To when they'd both been so alone and yet not alone. The leather was wet and sticking to his skin, but the moment they were off, he was grabbing her hand, touching her forehead, his gaze more clinical than intimate.

"What are you doing?"

"Checking your body temperature. You keep shivering."

"I'm not shivering," she retorted, even as her teeth clattered together in cold. "_You're_ shivering." Because he was. His whole body was shaking, and his jaw was moving up and down—not the way it usually did when he was chewing on his words or thoughts, but the way her was. With cold. "Turn on the heat."

"The heat is on."

"Turn it up then."

"You don't need to panic."

"I'm not panicking, you're panicking." He was, she could feel it in his force signature. Deep, soul-crushing panic, his heart beating a horrible tattoo against his chest and the confusion in his eyes turning into abject fear. 

"I'm not," he tried, but Rey reached for his hand and took it. 

"You are."

"You died," he burst out. "You died and—" He cut himself off. 

"And you brought me back," she said quietly. "Now—how can we stop shivering?"

He didn't say anything but he had always been cursed with the most expressive eyes. Even when he'd been bringing her to Snoke, she'd known it was taking every fiber of his self-control to hide his true thoughts, his true feelings, that he'd sooner kill Snoke than let her die.

_Oh._

Whatever else had changed, that hadn't. 

It hadn't for her either.

And his eyes were telling her that he knew what they had to do, but was afraid to say it. Which was how Rey wracked her brains for whatever she'd learned over the years about how to survive the desert nights if you were out on your own. _You don't. The cold will kill you more soundly than the heat will. A body will warm you right up._

There was barely enough room in this ship for both of them. And if the heat was on and her lips were still turning blue, and he was hesitant to say it...

She tugged him closer and pushed him into the seat. "Rey," he sputtered in surprise, but a moment later she was clambering into his lap, pressing her hands to his chest to try and warm them and pressing her chest as close to his as it would get. 

"I'm trying to—"

"This isn't going to work."

"It is, it keeps people alive in the desert, keeps them warm—"

"Not when the wet clothes are sucking in all the heat they're generating," he gritted out, clearly trying to keep his teeth from chattering too hard. "It doesn't matter how warm we are if our clothes—"

So Rey leaned back and unfastened her belt and shrugged out of her wrappings. She tugged her undershirt up over her head and ignored the way that Ben's eyes were bugging out of his head and snapped away so that he wasn't gawking at her bared breasts. She pulled back and worked on shucking her trousers down her legs. Her boots did not want to come off. The leather was quite as determined to stay on her feet as Ben's leather gloves had been to stay on his hands. She had to sit down on the ground to try and tug them off while Ben took off his tunic and undershirt, while he stood and took his pants off. 

"Why did your boots come off so easily," she growled up at him from where she was sitting.

And a moment later her boots were loose and floating in the air in front of her and Ben was smirking down at her.

"Shut up," she muttered, pulling her pants the rest of the way off and his smirk disappeared when she shoved him down into the seat again and climbed onto his lap again, her legs straddling his hips, their chests pressed together, the only thing between their skin the thin, damp underwear that neither of them had seemed quite willing to divest themselves of. 

That was better. That was much better. Because even if she wasn't immediately warm, she could still feel the beginnings of heat that didn't get soaked up immediately into their wet clothes.

But of course now she was mostly naked, sitting on Ben's lap, her face inches from his. His breath was warm against her cheek, his eyes looking anywhere but at her as they darted here and there around the cockpit.

And she could tell why. It didn't take her long at all—or rather, it didn't take him long at all.

It was extremely obvious how hard he was getting underneath her. There was no way to hide it. And his face kept getting redder and redder and redder.

Her heart had stopped and so had his.

She bent her head down and his face snapped to look at hers and that was the moment everything changed.

With a groan, his hands were at her hips, nudging her up and down as his lips closed the distance between them. If his breath had been warm crossing the cool air between them, it was hot when his lips parted and his tongue slid into her mouth. Rey wrapped her arms around his neck, rocking herself against him and there was something that was just so beautifully sturdy about him, wide and strong against her. He was alive, she was alive and neither of them had enough resolve to pretend that that wasn't exactly what they wanted. What was fighting to the death when you couldn't bear it if your opponent died? No victory could be as sweet as his lips kissing their way down her neck, her arching her back and pressing her breasts up until his face was rubbing between them. 

His hands kept her hips from moving too quickly, but she could still feel him twitching between them, and she wondered what would happen if she reached down and tugged at it. 

"Please," he moaned. "Rey—Please."

Had he heard that thought? Had she projected it out to him? Or was he just saying that as he sucked at the skin at the top of one of her breasts. Was he just saying _please_ because all he had ever wanted was her. 

_Then why didn't he come with me? If I was all he wanted?_

But she couldn't care about that now. She couldn't let herself as he ducked his head lower, lifted her hips up a little bit so that she wasn't pressed right against his shaft but rather so that her nipple was close enough for him to suck on. He was—with abandon now, teeth dragging roughly but not unpleasantly across her sensitive skin. She couldn't tell if it was puckered from cold or arousal, just as she couldn't tell if she was wet from the sea or not. Her underpants certainly didn't feel cold in their dampness anymore. If anything, they felt uncomfortably warm. It would not be long before they were chafing her skin raw.

"Ben," she whispered and he looked up at her, his mouth still wrapped around her tit. "Ben, wait."

And he pulled back at once, fear crossing his face. The fear only sharpened when she got off his lap but turned to shock the moment she began to shimmy out of her underpants. "It was starting to chafe," she told him, feeling her cheeks heat. Where before he had looked anywhere but at her bare breasts, now he was staring unabashedly at the thatch of hair between her legs. It looked like his brain had stopped working, like he couldn't hear or think anything at all. 

She stepped out of her underpants, leaving them on the floor of the cockpit and climbed back onto his lap and this time his mouth wasn't on her breast. This time, he was sucking on her neck as hard as he could, his grip on her hips tighter than it had been before. _Please, _she heard him begging again. _Please, Rey, please let me—_

So she peeled one hand from her hip—his right hand, the hand she'd touched in that hut on Ahch-To—and slid it down between her legs and Ben went very, very still.

He was holding his breath, his lips resting on more than kissing her neck. The only thing that was moving was his fingers, which were twitching as they stroked lightly up and down her folds and there was the answer**—**smooth, glossy arousal that could not have come from the sea.

Rey ran her hands up his arm to his chest. She thumbed briefly at his nipples before pausing with a gasp as he circled the nub at the top of her slit. "More," she whispered. Because that—she wanted more of that. 

And he gave it to her, firm little circles with the pads of his fingers and Rey wasn't really aware of her own hand dropping down between them until he was groaning and his head was tilting back against the seat and his eyes were fluttering clothes and his mouth formed a voiceless "_Fuck_," as she pulled him loose from his underpants, gripped his shaft, and began to pump up and down. 

"Rey," he groaned and his fingers left the top of her cunt and one of them pressed into her. "Oh—I—"

"Ben," she whimpered. She'd never whimpered in her life, but she was whimpering now. The heat of him, the raw emotion—everything of it all.

She could feel all of him now. Not his cock—his very soul. It wasn't just revealed to her, it was filling the cockpit, emanating from him, ever corner of his soul illuminated, bared to her. _I love you. How can you love me? I think you might though, _in every breath he was making. 

As if she needed to be unable to breathe again today.

"A little tighter at the top," he managed after a moment.

"Like this?"

"Perfect." The word turned into a hiss and his thumb was back, pressing against that bundle of nerves again as a second finger joined the first inside her. 

How had she ever been cold? How could she possibly have been cold? She felt too hot now, unbearably hot, needy as she rocked herself against his hand. His head still tilted back, his gaze distant as he looked up at the duraglass above them which was now fully fogged up. There was a gentle thrumming of rain overhead, but it was almost lost to the way her heart was beating, the way her body was rolling of its own accord now, the way every fiber of her being was begging for more, the way she could feel Ben's love for her in the very air she was breathing.

_Don't leave me._

Was it him thinking that, or her?

She didn't know; she wasn't sure she cared.

"Can I?" she asked him. And either he knew what she wanted, or he didn't know and didn't care but would give her anything she wanted because he jerked his head in a nod and went very still when she eased his hand away from her and guided him into her. For a long moment, all was still. Errant thoughts crossed her mind, how perfectly he fit inside her, how warm she felt, how there was no coming back from this—as though there had been coming back from touching hands.

And then they began to move. Ben first, his hips jerking up into hers a little erratically, then hers, trying—and failing—to match his motion because there was no way to—

"Wait, stop," Ben said and she went still at once.

"What's—?"

"No, I just—I need a second. I want to last."

She looked down at him. Her hands were on his shoulders now, stroking up and down his neck, and he was looking up at her like she was the only thing that had ever mattered to him. 

Tears filled her eyes at that; a lump lodged itself in her throat. And because she couldn't help it, because no one had ever looked at her like that and meant it, she bent her head to kiss him.

He let out a long groan, his tongue slipping between her lips again, his hips jerking up underneath her once more and this time the rhythm was steady. This time, she could meet him, and oh, how they danced together. They raced one another, sliding along one another faster and faster until their hearts couldn't keep up. Rey's hand was on the armrest of the seat, the other thrown up over her head to press against the cool, foggy glass, sliding slightly and clearing the fog away. His lips were at her throat, her cheeks, her breasts; his hands roamed her back, holding her up, holding her close as her gasps ripped out of her as her blood raced and soared.

Maybe it was her pleasure that flooded her and made her breathless; maybe it was some of his swirling in the air around them. She didn't really care, though, as her body shuddered, as fire raced through her veins, as he twitched inside her, and came with a moaned attempt at her name. 

She collapsed across his chest, her face buried in the crook of his neck, her heart hammering against his chest, his hammering against hers.

She didn't know what to say. She hadn't had time to say anything after they touched hands on Ahch-To. Luke had interrupted them while everything still overwhelmed them.

No one could interrupt them now. It was just them. Just the two of them.

"Ben," she whispered to him. "Please. I can't—I can't do this again." He let out a long sigh. "I don't want to leave you behind again."

"You won't have to," he whispers.

And for the third time that day, her heart stops in her chest.

**Author's Note:**

> [here i am!](http://linktr.ee/crossingwinter) hope you enjoyed!


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